Kina enjoys being far enough away from him that Cad Bane's autoimmolation doesn't affect her, because she didn't yeet the enemy in closer!  She launched them in a ballistic trajectory at the wall!  There's knockout gas grenades?  She's commandeering those, thanks!  If they're not too on fire to help any.

They are very on fire! Actually, so is most of the room! There is now a combination of smoke and the gas, which probably isn't enough to make everyone unconscious, but it will probably make most people pretty dizzy.

Soon enough, everyone but Kina, Mundi, Syndulla, and Jabba have either fled or collapsed. Which... uh, is not great, given the fire that they seem to be collapsing into. Someone should do something about that.

...Well, there is a fire extinguisher in the hovertruck's cab.  And maybe Cad Bane brought cryo grenades to this party?

If all else fails, Kina will just...haul everyone out with the hovertruck, cutting her way out instead of stunt-driving this time.

Um... remember earlier, when Kina was asking if the Force had anything to say? Is she still paying attention? Because it has something to say!

Most of the bounty hunters are supposed to have been defeated by this point. But, of course, there are always tricks available, for those who have unique talents. Such as Aurra Sing, who before being a top bounty hunter had briefly trained as a Jedi.

Still lying in the back of the truck, eyes closed and being careful not to even breathe, Sing will fire a blaster bolt at Mundi's head, and then fire a stun bolt at Kina just a fraction of a second later, aimed with Force-boosted precision directly at her leg, where the shield shouldn't cover. It might not knock her out in one hit, but it should at least weaken her enough for Sing to take her out.

But Kina might be able to dodge or block in time, if she's warned by the Force. So Sing will be ready to leap out, reach with the Force to call Trebor's fallen lightsaber to her hand, and attack them from much closer.

And this is why Kina has a proper shield!

She has two of them, actually; one, modified to be spring-loaded for emergency activation, lives on her back, one's carried, which is good, because she needs both of them when the Force screams in her ear.  Flinging her handheld shield out to deflect the blast at Master Adi-Mundi, and springing the shield on her back to deflect Aurra's stunbolt with, of all things, an actual backflip, several thoughts go through her head, in addition to indignation that she's doing combat acrobatics.  Blasters are by far the most common weapon a Jedi will face and Kina directed her limited training with that fact in mind, but as she stares down Aurra, sabers ignited, one a rainbow-shimmer white, the other her saber-blaster's blue...

She's really regretting that she didn't train a bit more saber-work when she had time!

Sing isn't actually the greatest with a lightsaber either; it's been a long time since she trained, and she hasn't trained against a girl much smaller than her with two lightsabers. But she can still probably take Kina. But if she saved Mundi... that'll make things more difficult.

Hmm. She wants to take Kina alive, but she can probably find someone who'll pay for her death, so she'll kill if she has to. Still, stunning her would pay better. She hurls herself at Kina with her lightsaber, while in her other hand, her blaster fires again, letting off another stun bolt. What happens when Kina has to fight someone who's holding both a saber and a blaster?

Kina's two blades practice deflection as she gives ground, backstepping but not actively trying to disengage even as she puts her Soresu lessons to good use - seeing the world in vectors and angles and lines-of-fire as she tries to get her own shots off, and furthermore lash out at the blaster to render it inoperable!

Sing will not let her blaster be cut, thanks! But she won't be able to keep attacking Kina for long, because someone is being very annoying.

He sure is! Mundi will join in the fight, and hopefully overwhelm her with a third saber.

And Syndulla will also try to be annoying! From a safe distance.

This was a bad idea. Why does this girl mess things up. She has killed Jedi Masters and they were not this infuriating.

Fine! After frantically trying to dodge and deflect the multidirectional attacks for a few seconds, Sing manages to slip out and runs at top speed towards the exit recently blown through the wall.

Yank.

Resist yank!

Kina, her cunning plan (of having and utilizing allies) having succeeded, takes the breathing room this gives her to line up a shot with which to blast her opponent already!

...She's going to make some more equipment, when she's done here.  The shield's useful, but she needs an offensive option that isn't on her arms.  Possibly two or three, even.  Because then she could have just flipped a switch and kriffing blasted this - what even is she?  In Force terms?  Blasted this probably-not-a-Jedi without trying contortions that didn't actually work!

Well, Kina's plan hasn't entirely succeeded, because in the meantime, Jabba has escaped!

Wait. No. He is a very slow Hutt. He isn't even halfway to the door yet.

And in any case, Windu is at the door, with several battle droids and Twi'lek soldiers. He will knock Jabba upside-down with the Force, and let him struggle to get back up.

"Kina. Master Mundi. General Syndulla." Master Trebor... is dead. Well, other than that, "Good work. We haven't completely taken the tower, but there wasn't a lot of resistance, and we have several key areas secured. Let's get that," he says, gesturing to the still wobbling Hutt, "to give the order for surrender, and we can end this."

"...Darn.  I have to admit, I was hoping I would get a chance to blast him.  Not that I'm going to do that now, when it would be counterproductive, but...

"You were the symbol of the boot upon my neck, the bomb under my skin, for almost all my life," she says to Jabba.  "And now, you're finally knocked off of it.

"Make the best of the chances you're given to make amends, now.  Or else."

She turns away, continuing to keep an eye on even the secured Force-Sensitive being much more important than a soon to be powerless slug.

Syndulla was also hoping for a chance to blast Jabba, and was significantly less likely than Kina to have had his blaster set on stun when doing so.

He helps secure the area, and then, probably with Kina's help, finds the slaves' quarters, and gets everyone to safety.

By the time they've wrapped everything up with Jabba, the word has spread that he's surrendered, and his army seems to have disbanded! Also, they, along with the leaders of both the Republic and the Confederacy, are getting very urgent messages from the three or four members of the Hutt Council who were either away from their bases or really had gotten rid of any visible crime around them. But it's not like they have any coherent arguments beyond hey, stop it, and they're not really willing to risk their own political power to help the others. So it seems like they really have put an end to the Hutt Clan!

Probably the most pressing issue on the political side is what to do with the planets that the Hutts had de facto owned. The people of Nal Hutta and its moon probably have a legitimate desire to continue under the Hutt Clan's leadership, but there are still plenty of others that will probably need new, uncorrupted governments set up, including Tatooine itself. And while most of the people are probably not going to love the Republic or the Confederacy, both sides seem to think that if they don't take them under their jurisdiction, the crime will only grow worse and worse.

"Well, this sure is suffering from success," she quips to Master Windu, in private, after an almost interminable meeting.

"...I wouldn't suggest abandoning Coruscant entirely, but I certainly do think the Order could stand to have closer contact with the disenfranchised of the galaxy.  Perhaps we could arrange for a longer-term mission, with the Service Corps?"

"Well, we have a somewhat limited number of Jedi available, with all the chaos that's been going on recently. But yes, we can keep travelling around and helping with these sorts of things."

"...Yeah.  That's not going to solve the underlying problems, though.  The biggest one being that - Tatooine really just does not have anything that's worth living there for, and somehow I doubt that's a problem it has all by its lonesome.

"So we need to get people off this forsaken rock, or entice some actual business to the Outer Rim.

"Tourism might not be an implausible way to focus some of those economies; the twin suns of Tatooine do produce striking sunsets and sunrises, for example.

"Really, the thing is to make sure that the locals will fight back against someone swinging their weight around.

"And if the Republic and Confederacy both want to keep an eye on these planets, as much as they're really not useful...

"Well.

"Cooperation has been working well so far, hasn't it?"

Kina sketches out a plan that goes something like this:

1.) Neither the Republic nor the Confederacy shall proactively attempt to lay claim to these worlds until five years have passed.

2.) Until that time, issues on the planetary scale shall be resolved by a three-person council, composed of:

- A Republic appointee

- A Confederacy appointee

- A Jedi Order appointee, or the said appointee's recognized representative of a planetary government or intergovernmental dispute resolution body.

3.) Should said planetary representative see fit, they may unilaterally empty an appointee's seat, at which point the Jedi Order's appointee will sit it pro tem.

4.) After a planetary government has been stable for at least one year, the Republic and the Confederacy will respect a plebiscite upon membership in either or neither body, or continuation as is; it shall require a strict supermajority (75%) vote of the population at or above the age of majority, as determined by joint census operations, in favor of one option for the option to pass.

- The voting process shall meet at least as many equitable voting criteria as ranked-choice voting.

"I think, Master Windu, that this is the plan I would suggest to best produce positive results, at the moment.  I'm certain refinements exist, but this is where I'd start to look."

"There are a few nitpicks I would have, on the voting processes, and also about how the Jedi aren't really going to be seen as neutral between the Republic and Confederacy. But more generally than that, I just don't think such a plan would be accepted. At least one side is going to believe they can get the planets mostly for themselves, and they'll be lobbying against this idea. And Tatooine itself probably won't like this either. They're not upset about whose side they end up on, they're just generally not looking for anyone to be controlling them. They'll probably prefer to just join whichever side seems to be less legally strict - I would guess that's the Confederacy - and then hope they can stay out of everyone's attention, not get a special place in galactic politics."

"Galactic politics are the only hope they have of avoiding getting caught up in another Hutt Cartel, this time with a thin veneer of legitimacy.  Neither the Republic nor the Confederacy, despite their idealists' best efforts, can truly claim to be good, especially for the average citizen.  Not as things are.  Not yet.  And these planets need the resources and time to build something lasting, lest they be drained of what little remains of their own.

"And I think you could make quite a pitch to the traders of the disputed planets, on the basis of starting a bidding war for their allegiance, and the just-freed slaves of not putting their throat beneath a different boot just because it wanted to remove this one.

"That said, some of these complaints I truly have no answer to, especially perceived Jedi non-neutrality.

"But the greatest art of politics is the compromise, within which no one is happy - and I think the Republic and the Confederacy will certainly be against letting the other party have these worlds immediately integrated as a bloc, whereas places like Tatooine, who know they have suffered and must mend their wounds, but are offered only a choice of new masters to take...

"Raising the possibility of proper independence from two nations that clearly care more about them as political cachet than people, despite Antilles and Dooku's efforts, might well get them onboard overall.

"If I were trying to represent Tatooine's best interests, I think I'd think that this plan is the least horrible, considering that Tatooine simply doesn't have any administration without Hutt-Cartel connections and there needs to be time bought to find replacements somehow - but I'm a strange girl, and I think strange things.

"Perhaps we should ask Tatooine about it.  We should certainly ask the Force."